A Luther Seminary Master's of Divinity Paper
Spring, 2018
Spring, 2018
The Postmodern Human Condition:
Burning Grief, the Abyss, and the Weakness of Love
Burning Grief, the Abyss, and the Weakness of Love
The transition from modernity to
postmodernity has been a puzzling and even paralyzing one for academics and
pastors alike. The modern certainty and
confidence in reason and ability to understand the world has been replaced by a
postmodern pluralism, acknowledgement of radical “otherness,” and paradox. This transition has confounded many Christian
leaders; attempts to reach postmodern individuals through modern thought
processes are fruitless, and these failures create despair in those who could
help others cope with this new world.
Christian
leaders and theologians have an opportunity brought by postmodernism to emerge with
a more truthful representation of our faith and of Jesus Christ. The postmodern condition is one of
hopelessness and a lack of foundations; the metaphysical God and subsequent
empty discussions of providence and a theology of glory cannot answer to this
any more than the culture of pluralism and consumerism can. In contrast, a theology of the cross includes
an acknowledgement of the grief that results from any relationship, particularly
the relationships within a triune God.
This theology also acknowledges the chaotic abyss above which we all
hover – an abyss ignored and rejected by a theology of glory. A true understanding
of the nature of the divine love brought by Jesus Christ to the world can
address the postmodern condition and provide hope which is the “spirit, the
aspiration, the very respiration of God’s spirit, of God’s insistence… Hope that
dares to say ‘come,’ dares to pray, ‘come,’ to what it cannot see coming. Hope that is hope in the promise of the world.”[1]
GRIEF
The postmodern experience is
punctuated by precariousness and the ever-present specter of grief. Though once the domain of philosophers, the
contemplation of future grief and loss is now a common thought brought about by
greater awareness of war, disease, and sudden violence. Postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida
writes,
To
have a friend, to look at him, to follow him with your eyes, to admire him in
friendship, is to know in a more intense way, already injured, always
insistent, and more and more unforgettable, that one of the two of you will
inevitably see the other die.[2]
This is the
condition of grief with which we continually live, and though it is no
different today than in modernity, postmodern individuals are more likely to be
preoccupied with this knowledge.
Mark
Buchanan, in his recent book “Things Unseen,” extends this idea into longing
for God and for the experience of God in eternity:
Isn’t
that how you feel much of the time? That what you want the most—and most of the
time you’re not even sure what that is—seems always out of reach? That your
most robust laughter rings with the echo of your weeping? That your most joyous
homecomings are haunted at the edges by unnamable sorrows? That your victories and
breakthroughs are mixed with complaint and doubt? That something’s always
missing? We were not created for earth alone. We were created for eternity.[3]
Ancient
erotic literature addressed this feeling in a way which reason and modernity
lost track of. In descriptions and the
experience of the beloved, “Presence itself points to absence,”[4]
and “…the ache of longing and grief of remembering contradict the reports of
joy when the absent one is imagined to be present.”[5] This pre-emptive grief for the friend or the
beloved is a natural state for postmodern individuals, which continues through
actual experiences of loss.
Jurgen
Moltmann describes this experience of sorrow in spiritual terms:
“Sorrow
is something deeper, something more intimate and more spiritual than mere
pain. Sorrow often penetrates right into
what we call happiness, and even into what is truly happiness – happiness which
is not yet sufficient for the person who sorrows, and before which he even
trembles.”[6]
Grief
and the subsequent constant state of unrest in the postmodern psyche, take us
naturally to the cross. As Moltmann
writes, “To understand what happened between Jesus and his God and Father on
the cross, it is necessary to talk in trinitarian terms. The Son suffers dying, the Father suffers the
death of the Son. The grief of the
Father here is just as important as the death of the Son.”[7]
THE ABYSS IN
POSTMODERN EXPERIENCE
Anxiety and the emotional and
spiritual experience of looking over a precipice are also characteristics of
the postmodern experience. Modernism put
up blocks against this abyss, hoping to fill it with reason, and the theologies
of providence and glory were results of these blocks. Religion presented and perceived as false
expressions of happiness, stability, and facades has been rejected by the
postmodern soul unable to believe in these falsehoods. We have feared to acknowledge the abyss in
our faith communities and pulpits, afraid that acknowledging our own lack of
knowledge and certainty will destabilize our communities. The postmodern understanding of “radical
otherness,” where individuals feel disconnected from others could be met
through an acknowledgement of the abyss.
Caputo writes, “In the postmodern world of advanced transportation and
information technologies, the multiplex and multicultural diversity of life now
comes rushing in upon us, inundating us in waves of differences. We postmodern people are becoming less and
less identical with ourselves, and more rapidly so with each passing day.”[8] Elizabeth Jantzen, exploring the work of
Medieval mystic Hadewijch, also extends this idea into religion: “Once one has
looked into the nihilistic abyss and found the abyss returning the gaze, then
the untroubled empirical imagination of Anglo-American philosophy of religion
can hardly seem other than naïve.”[9]
In contrast to this naive theology
of providence that cannot address the postmodern world, the abyss is precisely
where God is found. Our congregations,
friends, neighbors and we ourselves are guaranteed to find ourselves in these
precipice experiences. Theology of the
cross addresses these experiences honestly and forthrightly. Gerhard Forde addressed this even without
considering the postmodern condition:
The
cross cannot be considered therefore as one option among several in our
attempts to see God. The cross shuts
down alternatives. It destroys the
wisdom of the wise. It blinds the sight
of the theologian of glory. What is
revealed is precisely that we don’t know God.[10]
Though this abyss of
the unknowable is frightening, it is real, and it is precisely in embracing
this reality that we can reach postmodern individuals who truly have nowhere
else to turn. Caputo writes, “This
darker dialogue takes place among communities of faith, communities of those
without community practicing an unconditional faith, a faith without protection
from doubt.”[11]
THE WEAKNESS OF LOVE
Jantzen
and Hadewijch find this chaotic, unknowable abyss to be a generative force, one
in which we can find the creativity of God.
“Whatever other meanings the abyss carries in Hadewijch, it is
fundamentally a womb. It is the depths
of love from which God is brought into the world, first in the incarnation, and
then as the soul is born into the divine and the divine brought to birth again
in the soul.”[12] This creativity is ultimately a
characteristic of the way God loves the world.
Moltmann contended that “Creative love is ultimately suffering love
because it is only through suffering that it acts creatively and redemptively
for the freedom of the beloved.”[13]
Because postmodernity is beginning
to discover, if not in power systems then in the souls and hearts of
individuals, that progress as we have imagined it has only led to empty
consumerism, manipulation in marketing, and social fragmentation as well as war
and environmental destruction, theology that understands that God’s love and
incoming kingdom as the antithesis to these developments can address the lack
of satisfaction brought about by them.
In fact, as Caputo asserts, “…the mark of God in Christianity… is
systematically found on the side of the “weak” features – of forgiveness,
peace, nonviolence, poverty – not of the string or ‘virile’ features.”[14]
Ancient erotic poets and other
writers understood this “weakness” as a feature of love. According to David Frederickson, they
describe a “wounded heart, tenderness, madness, ecstasy, intoxication – and
sweetness! These erotic motifs from
classical literature describe the vulnerability of the lover to the beloved’s
welfare and response.”[15] In fact, “…eros is love when the beloved is
present and pothos is love when the beloved is absent. They teach us that there is no escape from
the vulnerability to loss and grief written inside of love… there is no
dichotomy that can insulate love from longing.”[16] Finding in the “Christ-Hymn” of Philippians
that both human and divine love are characterized by desire for communion and
suffering over absence, Frederickson contends that the love of Christ for humanity
“…is not love at arms’ length. Not pity,
nor condescending grace… Like the lover of Latin elegy, Christ is defenseless
against the power of love. It conquers
him and makes him a prisoner. The Lord
is a slave of love.”[17]
This
outpoured love, not in subservience but in pure desire, is a love that is
desperately needed by the postmodern world.
The perception is that the love of God has conditions, has exceptions,
and therefore this indispensable love is rejected. This is not something for pastors and
theologians to shrug off as a symptom of the age. “For the loving God, nothing
is a matter of indifference. Before an equivocal, an undecided God, nothing is
significant. For the God who in his love
is free, everything is infinitely important.”[18]
Do
we have an answer? Moltmann writes, “If
there were no God, the world as it is would be all right. It is only the desire, the passion, the
thirst for God which turns suffering into conscious pain and turns the
consciousness of pain into a protest against suffering.”[19] He says that this is “…the open wound of life
in this world. It is the real task of
faith and theology to make it possible for us to survive, to go on living, with
this open wound.”[20]
For
some, this open wound can be described as nihilism, and the terror that
accompanies it. However, John Caputo
finds in grace the ultimate nihilism. He
writes that “The nihilism of grace is hidden in plain sight. It sits silently in the center of cosmic
nihilism, waiting to be noticed, according to the logic of being for nothing,
living life without why. The nothing is
the purifying fire of the gift, which burns off every why and wherefore.”[21] He continues that this grace “…issues in a
view of human life that deprivileges the order of possessions, power, property,
and prestige, and instead privileges a simplicity and poverty of life that is
at odds with the rule of global capitalism and politics.”[22]
This
grace, this kingdom of God, is more imminently a hope for the world now than
ever before. We hover at the edge of an
abyss of deconstruction and despair, searching for satisfaction in materialism
and other false gods. But eventually as
we come to face grief and a chaotic future, these things will prove empty. “But the logos
of the cross is not a recipe for impotence and nihilism. On the contrary, it is the very tissue of
hope in life.”[23]
Moltmann’s
conclusion was that
In
the crucified God is the basis for a real hope which both embraces and
overcomes the world, and the ground for a love which is stronger than death and
can sustain death. It is the ground for
living with the terror of history and the end of history, and nevertheless
remaining in love and meeting what comes in openness for God’s future.[24]
Our conclusion can be the same. Instead of rejecting the postmodern world
with either attempts to entrench and shore up modernity or withdrawal,
disengagement, and resignation toward a “dying church,” we can engage and
embrace it. Admitting that relationships
are fraught with grief, we can uphold the grief inherent in the triune
God. Understanding that the abyss is part
of the human condition and not a failure of character or faith, we can show that
God is present in the abyss: creative,
generative, and restorative. Viewing the
love of God as weakness and desire instead of sovereignty and obedience, we can
demonstrate and share this love with a broken world.
[1] Caputo, John D. Hoping Against Hope: Confessions of a Postmodern Pilgrim.
Fortress Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota: 2015
Pg 199
[5]
Frederickson, Pg 26
[6]
Moltmann, Jurgen. The Trinity and the
Kingdom. Harper and Row, San Francisco:
1981.
Kindle edition, Location 692
Kindle edition, Location 692
[8]
Caputo, Hoping Against Hope, Pg 100
[9]
Jantzen, Pg 256
[10]
Forde, Gerhard O. On Being a Theologian
of the Cross. William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan: 1997. Pg 80
[11]
Caputo, Pg 102
[12]
Jantzen, Pg 249
[13]
Moltmann, Loc 961
[14]
Caputo, John D. “The Weakness of God: A
Radical Theology of the Cross” in The Wisdom and Foolishness of God, Christophe
Chalamet and Hans-Christoph Askani, Editors.
Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 2015 Pg 32
[15]
Frederickson, Pg 40
[16]
Frederickson, Pg 151
[17] Frederickson,
Pg 69
[18]
Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, Loc 2225
[19]
Moltmann, Loc. 796
[20]
Moltmann, Loc 813
[21]
Caputo, Hoping Against Hope, Pg 172
[22]
Caputo, The Weakness of God, Pg 41
[23]
Caputo, Pg 58
[24]
Moltmann, The Crucified God, Pg 278
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